Warren Buffett Backs Up GM CEO Barra, and Picks Up a New Caddy

You don’t become one of the wealthiest individuals in the world by extravagant spending, and among the most affluent of social echelons, no one knows this better than Berkshire Hathaway Chair Warren Buffett. He’s renowned for his relative frugality, from his comparatively small house to his modest vehicles relative to his wealth.

So it was a surprise — but not a shock — when a picture of Buffett seemingly in the passenger seat of a humble Subaru Outback started making the rounds on Facebook and other sites. Subaru, for its part, also featured the photo, which has the unmistakable roof rack that comes standard on the popular soft-roader. Only the car wasn’t his, and the Oracle of Omaha was quite taken with the attention he was getting for it.

“I’ve never driven a Subaru in my life,” he told Forbes’ Joann Muller in an interview. It turned out to be a courtesy car provided by organizers of last week’s Allen & Co. conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, and he was waiting in the vehicle while his daughter picked something up inside. “I stayed in the car and somebody snapped that picture,” he said.

Buffett instead replaced his 2006 Cadillac (NYSE:GM) DTS — which only had 19,000 miles on the clock — with a new Cadillac XTS, from one of his major investments: General Motors. He wants to make it clear that he won’t be buying a Japanese car — or any foreign car, presumably — according to Automotive News.